UBN

A new way to nip AIDS in the bud

When new AIDS virus particles bud from an infected cell, an enzyme named protease activates to help the viruses mature and infect more cells. That’s why modern AIDS drugs control the disease by inhibiting protease. Now, University of Utah researchers found a way to turn protease into a double-edged sword: They showed that if they […]


Glass with a past

When U alum Jodi McRaney-Rusho first explored creating art with post-consumer glass, she was met with discouraging responses from people in the glass art business. Some experienced artists flat out told her it couldn’t be done. McRaney-Rusho, who began working with recycled glass as a full-time artist in 2002, couldn’t let that stand in her […]


How a huge landslide shaped Zion National Park

  A Utah mountainside collapsed 4,800 years ago in a gargantuan landslide known as a “rock avalanche,” creating the flat floor of what is now Zion National Park by damming the Virgin River to create a lake that existed for 700 years. Those are key conclusions of a new University of Utah study that provides […]


Brit accents vex U.S. hearing-impaired elderly

  Older Americans with some hearing loss shouldn’t feel alone if they have trouble understanding British TV sagas like “Downton Abbey.” A small study from the University of Utah suggests hearing-impaired senior citizens have more trouble than young people comprehending British accents when there is background noise. “The older hearing-impaired had just a little more […]


James Ehleringer receives 2016 Rosenblatt Prize

James Ehleringer, distinguished professor of biology at the University of Utah, was honored with the Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence, the U’s most prestigious faculty award. The $40,000 gift is presented annually to a faculty member who displays excellence in teaching, research and administrative efforts. The Rosenblatt Prize Committee, a group of distinguished faculty members, recommends […]


University of Utah to graduate 8,291 students May 5

The general commencement ceremony at the University of Utah will be held Thursday, May 5, at 6:30 p.m. in the Jon M. Huntsman Center. This year’s graduating class of 8,291 students represents 23 Utah counties, all 50 U.S. states and 92 countries. These numbers are based on data available prior to graduation and are subject […]


Natural History Museum of Utah to showcase new book The Mammals of Luzon Island

Based on more than a century of accumulated data and 15 years of intensive field work, The Mammals of Luzon Island is part field guide and part general reference book for all those interested in the mammals of Luzon, the largest of the Philippine Islands and fifteenth largest island in the world. On Wednesday, April […]


A new way to get electricity from magnetism

By showing that a phenomenon dubbed the “inverse spin Hall effect” works in several organic semiconductors – including carbon-60 buckyballs – University of Utah physicists changed magnetic “spin current” into electric current. The efficiency of this new power conversion method isn’t yet known, but it might find use in future electronic devices including batteries, solar […]


Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker and acclaimed filmmaker Pratibha Parmar to speak at the U

On Wednesday, April 20 and Thursday, April 21, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and poet Alice Walker and acclaimed filmmaker Pratibha Parmar will participate in a series of events as part of the U’s Barbara L. & Norman C. Tanner Center for Nonviolent Human Rights Advocacy’s “Artists as Advocates: Women’s Rights and Human Rights” series. All events […]


The pyrophilic primate

Fire, a tool broadly used for cooking, constructing, hunting and even communicating, was arguably one of the earliest discoveries in human history. But when, how and why it came to be used is hotly debated among scientists. A new scenario crafted by University of Utah anthropologists proposes that human ancestors became dependent on fire as […]